I had a 78 year old woman patient, bunch of kids and grandkids in the room. The patient spoke only Spanish and the grandson was translating. As I was exiting the grandma patient said something forceful so I turned and asked the man what she'd just said, and it was exactly that: "People in Healthcare should speak Spanish."
I was, well, insulted, speechless, fill in the blank. The patient had not been much of a problem until then. I stared at the grandson and didn't reply, just left. As I thought about it, I started thinking. I'm not a foreigner, why should I learn another language? I'm in the middle of the country to boot! And, why are these people insulting their caregiver anyway?
Talking this out with other nurses, I guess I wasn't the first one to hear such stuff. Is this something I should get used to?
Those are just from the first page of google results about whether or not police officers should be able to speak spanish.
In 4 out of 7 of those articles, Spanish training on basic words and phrases is being provided to the officers, and I'm willing to bet they are being paid for the time. If the same were provided to nurses and other healthcare professionals, maybe they'd be more open to learning some Spanish. I had to chuckle when I looked at the article "Do you think a police officer should be suspended because he didn't understand/speak Spanish?" If you read the comments at the bottom, those posters are posting a lot of the same thoughts that are being posted here on this thread!
Due to budget cuts, this class isn't happening anymore, but they were having kindergarten - 5th grade students take Spanish every day. I realize a lot of people would see that as a great thing, but as a former teacher, when SOOO many kids can't read AT ALL in ENGLISH and the ones who can aren't reading on grade level - it irked me to no end. I could've ALWAYS used more time teaching reading. There was never enough. Including the time they were spending in SPANISH class!!
The funny part is - there are really not a lot of Spanish speaking people where I live in comparison to other parts of the country.
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
Again, the American Nurses Association recommends that nurses would benefit from learning a foreign language and that patients would get better nursing care and have better outcomes. If you disagree with that, I encourage you to challenge the ANA on their position, I'd be interested to hear their response.
I speak Spanish fluently, but the ANA does not speak for me. Don't presume that every nurse goes lock-step with what comes down on high from the ANA. To many of us, it's irrelevant.
Screw diversity, I DON'T AND WON'T TRANSLATE. It's outside my scope of practice, and it's entirely a matter of patient safety.
Lots of well-intentioned nurses have bought "instant Spanish" books. Suppose we miss some nuance of dialect, some convention of communication, some common street slang term and kill or disable a patient?
How will we know when a thing needs clarification? We have a hard enough time sensing when an Alz or stroke or mental pt is giving us good information, how about adding in the complication of not being a native speaker?
And of lesser importance, will we remember in what sense we translated a particular term a few years later in a courtroom?
Amateur translation, and by that I mean not having grown up speaking a language and absorbing the culture, is deadly dangerous. I'm going to pick up that horrendously expensive translator phone and have an expert tell me what's going on.
I had a translator once tell me "It makes no sense at all to your patient to associate his pain level with a number." You think I'm going to get something like that out of a few conversational courses, let alone a reference card?
Moreover, where a translator phone is provided, THAT'S THE STANDARD OF CARE. If an injury claimed to have been caused by translation error brings you to court, are you prepared to explain why you didn't use the best--and only hospital-provided and policy-approved--resource at your disposal?
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
here's another wrinkle: once we all learn spanish to satisfy the "needs" of 1/6 of the us population, and then the chinese or the french, or the germans get on the bandwagon and demand that we all learn their language, do the hispanics have to learn their language, too? and of course, the chinese, or germans, or french will have to learn spanish to make the lives of the hispanics easier. they will also be learning english because that's what they do. how ever will they have the time?
the sheer silliness of this is making me chuckle.
why no, silly. the chinese, french and germans have to immediately learn spanish to make the lives of the hispanics easier. we americans will have to learn those other languages, though, so we may comfort scared patients from china, france and germany who won't have learned english as they've been so busy learning spanish.
And of lesser importance, will we remember in what sense we translated a particular term a few years later in a courtroom?
Amateur translation, and by that I mean not having grown up speaking a language and absorbing the culture, is deadly dangerous. I'm going to pick up that horrendously expensive translator phone and have an expert tell me what's going on.
I had a translator once tell me "It makes no sense at all to your patient to associate his pain level with a number." You think I'm going to get something like that out of a few conversational courses, let alone a reference card?
Moreover, where a translator phone is provided, THAT'S THE STANDARD OF CARE. If an injury claimed to have been caused by translation error brings you to court, are you prepared to explain why you didn't use the best--and only hospital-provided and policy-approved--resource at your disposal?
Thanks a lot:eek: Your post just slapped me upside the head, because I often chart that I discussed some topics, ones that I feel confidant in using Spanish to discuss, like this "discussed ____ with Pt, in spanish. Pt. verbalized understanding." Now I'm thinking even that would probably not hold agua in court.
I had a translator once tell me "It makes no sense at all to your patient to associate his pain level with a number." You think I'm going to get something like that out of a few conversational courses, let alone a reference card?
And I also believe that it's a serious dumbing down of our patients when we ask this question of them. How many times have I had a patient give me the "pain is a 9" answer, while they are talking on the cell phone, laughing at a DVD, playing social butterfly to the hoards of friends who just cannot wait 24 hours to see the new baby at home. Right.
I have felt, almost since the beginning of the number system, that it is not reflective at all of a person's pain, for a variety of reasons. Observational skills (on the part of the nurse AT THE BEDSIDE) are far more correct....IMHO.
I seriously hope that many of you on this thread that don't think that we should be required to learn Spanish and are bothered by the trend of American citizens being expected to know Spanish are supporting the groups lobbying to make English the national language. We can shut this trend down.
Screw diversity, I DON'T AND WON'T TRANSLATE. It's outside my scope of practice, and it's entirely a matter of patient safety.
Lots of well-intentioned nurses have bought "instant Spanish" books. Suppose we miss some nuance of dialect, some convention of communication, some common street slang term and kill or disable a patient?
How will we know when a thing needs clarification? We have a hard enough time sensing when an Alz or stroke or mental pt is giving us good information, how about adding in the complication of not being a native speaker?
And of lesser importance, will we remember in what sense we translated a particular term a few years later in a courtroom?
Amateur translation, and by that I mean not having grown up speaking a language and absorbing the culture, is deadly dangerous. I'm going to pick up that horrendously expensive translator phone and have an expert tell me what's going on.
I had a translator once tell me "It makes no sense at all to your patient to associate his pain level with a number." You think I'm going to get something like that out of a few conversational courses, let alone a reference card?
Moreover, where a translator phone is provided, THAT'S THE STANDARD OF CARE. If an injury claimed to have been caused by translation error brings you to court, are you prepared to explain why you didn't use the best--and only hospital-provided and policy-approved--resource at your disposal?
Again, the evidence disagrees with you. Even with the availability of language lines, patients are safer when cared for by staff who are able to communicate directly and frequently, even at an amateur level. It is most definitely not outside your potential scope of practice; your scope of practice is any skill that you have learned and maintained that is not expressly prohibited, and as long as you are over 18, you can translate according to both my hospital policy and state law.
Language lines are great and still need to be used even by bilingual nurses, but they aren't actually the standard of care for minute to minute translation needs, only for consents and initial assessment. We have a language line where I work and we only allowed to use it for our initial shift assessment and for consents. Even then, 15% of hospitals don't use a language line at all.
Where I work, I can spend 10 hours of a 12 hour shift in one patient's room. Even if I was allowed to, is it likely that I would have the language line open that entire time? Probably not, and this is where the patient safety issue comes in. Just like patients on isolation, non-english speaking patients have poorer outcomes at least in part because we avoid them, having the ability to communicate in those situations where most nurses wouldn't use the language line, but instead just nod, smile, and slink back out of the room improves patient safety according to the evidence. Even though it is hard to disagree with someone who's views on this are self-described as "screw diversity", I'll defer to the evidence on this one.
Absolutely, here is one group you could donate to that is very active in the English-only movement. In fact the first comment I found on their message board for this topic sounds like it could be in this thread:
"Come on now Scott, we should be accommodating hosts and go out of our way to adapt for the convenience of others. Don't give caution for common sense or pay heed to the impracticality of it all. It's much more gracious of us to learn 150 other languages than for someone else to learn."
I hear they have a great summer camp for kids in northern Idaho too.
Now don't be silly.
Why don't you go work in Peru and let's see if they go out of their way to learn English to accommodate little ol' you now.
Uh no, I think not. I bet they be pretty darn outraged to see an American say " why don't you know English"
So its not just the US. It's all countries who have a national language set. They don't bother learning some other language because its an INSULT TO THAT COUNTRY AND THEIR CITIZENS
Why don't you go work in Peru and let's see if they go out of their way to learn English to accommodate little ol' you now.
Uh no, I think not. I bet they be pretty darn outraged to see an American say " why don't you know English"
So its not just the US. It's all countries who have a national language set. They don't bother learning some other language because its an INSULT TO THAT COUNTRY AND THEIR CITIZENS
so I say "if you don't like it then leave"
That's pretty much it. If immigrants come over to this country and don't want to learn the dominant language, and they do not like that people won't learn their own, then they should go back to their own country. Expecting your regular working-class citizens here to bend over backwards to learn a foreign language, when these immigrants make no effort to learn English, is just asinine, and imo offensive.
Again, the evidence disagrees with you. Even with the availability of language lines, patients are safer when cared for by staff who are able to communicate directly and frequently, even at an amateur level. It is most definitely not outside your potential scope of practice; your scope of practice is any skill that you have learned and maintained that is not expressly prohibited, and as long as you are over 18, you can translate according to both my hospital policy and state law.
QUOTE]
Maybe that's how it is in your state and at your hospital, but where I work, any joe-blow off the street who is over 18 cannot be considered a translator, even if they are a native speaking Hispanic. Family members are verboten as well. Our interpretors have to be certified medical translators, and as I mentioned before, I looked into doing this but cannot because I am not a native Spanish speaking person and I never spent years in a Spanish speaking country. So, in a nutshell, no amount of fluency on my part would suffice to get me the certification necessary to be an accepted translator.
Now, I have enough command of the language to do an entire labor, delivery and postpartum care without too much trouble, but your statements above do not hold water in all places.
I have no doubt that patients do better if someone caring for them speaks their language, but at some point, the people who come to this country for a better life, including better health care, have to take some of the responsibility for that and learn English. And sadly, positions such as yours is making it less and less necessary for them to do that.
I think you may be confusing someone who is allowed to translate and a certified medical translator, which are two different things and have different requirements placed on them. For initial assessments and to obtain consent, yes a certified medical translator is required. To ask "do you need anything", you aren't required to use a certified medical translator, only someone over 18. I've checked a few other states and haven't found another state where this rule isn't consistent.
April, RN, BSN, RN
1,008 Posts
In 4 out of 7 of those articles, Spanish training on basic words and phrases is being provided to the officers, and I'm willing to bet they are being paid for the time. If the same were provided to nurses and other healthcare professionals, maybe they'd be more open to learning some Spanish. I had to chuckle when I looked at the article "Do you think a police officer should be suspended because he didn't understand/speak Spanish?" If you read the comments at the bottom, those posters are posting a lot of the same thoughts that are being posted here on this thread!